Rock and a Hard Place Issue Nine: Winter 2023

Published February 21, 2023
Click here to Purchase

Everybody knows how to spot an undercover cop. Right?
Doing life, six months at a time . . .
You think the gun makers will always win?
When you can’t trust your own grandmother, that’s noir.

Rock and a Hard Place is back with issue 9, featuring a dirty dozen tales of woe and misfortune from some of crime and dark fiction’s finest writers.

RHP is the literary magazine that comes face-to-face with our gritty truths and hard luck realities, and doesn’t blink.

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

C.W. BLACKWELL (@cw_blackwell) is an American author from the Central Coast of California. His recent work has appeared with Down and Out Books, Shotgun Honey, Tough Magazine, Reckon Review, and Nosetouch Press. He is a 2021 Derringer award winner and 2022 Derringer finalist. His debut crime fiction novella Hard Mountain Clay was published in January 2023 from Shotgun Honey Books.

MIKE ZIMMERMAN (@zimwrites) sold his first short story to Gorezone magazine in 1989 and his most recent fiction has appeared in Rock and a Hard Place #7 and #8. His journalism has won multiple honors and he was a 2022 National Magazine Award finalist. His crime novels A Mosquito Over Sunset and Where the Sun Don't Shine are available now, with a new novel on the way in 2023 (if circumstances break right). Find him at www.zimwrites.com.

MIKE McHONE’s (@mike_mchone) work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Rock and a Hard Place, Guilty, Mystery Tribune, Mystery Magazine, and elsewhere. Visit him online at www.mikemchone.com

RICHARD RISEMBERG was born to a mixed and mixed-up family in Argentina, and dragged to LA as a child to escape the fascist regime. He's spent the next few decades exploring the darker corners of the America Dream and writing stories, poems, and essays based on his experiences. He has published widely in the last few years, as you can see at http://crowtreebooks.com/richard-risemberg-publications/.

ELENA E. SMITH has appeared in the anthologies Love Kills, BOULD Awards 2022, and Darkness Brewing; and has had short stories published in Yellow Mama Magazine and Kings River Life Magazine. She is working on a series of novels featuring Dean Devereaux.

WILLIAM KITCHER’s stories, plays, and comedy sketches (and one poem) have been published, produced and/or broadcast in Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Czechia, England, Guernsey, Holland, India, Ireland, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa, and the U.S. His stories have appeared in Fiery Scribe Review, Ariel Chart, Guilty, New Contrast, The Prague Review, Little Old Lady Comedy, Yellow Mama, Black Petals, Slippage Lit, and many other journals. His novel, Farewell And Goodbye, My Maltese Sleep, will be published in 2023 by Close To The Bone Publishing.

JENNIFER BERNARDINI (@Jen_Bernardini) lives in Connecticut with her two boys and husband. She has a master’s degree in Criminal Justice and is currently a substitute middle school teacher. She creates covers as well as formats and edits novels. She is also an active member of the Horror Writers Association of New England and has written for the Horror News Network. Other publications include Mirror in the Attic, We All Fall Down, Something Bad Happened: A Horror Journal, Something Bad Happened: An Anthology of Horror, which Jen produced and edited, and Seams on the Outside.

NICK KOLAKOWSKI (@nkolakowski) is a noir and horror writer who lives in NYC and loves to eat odd things.

DAVID HAGERTY (@DHagertyAuthor) is the author of the “Duncan Cochrane” mystery series, which chronicles crime and dirty politics in Chicago during his childhood. Real events inspired all four novels, including the murder of a politician’s daughter six weeks before election day (They Tell Me You Are Wicked), a series of sniper killings in the city’s most notorious housing project (They Tell Me You Are Crooked), the Tylenol poisonings (They Tell Me You Are Brutal), and the false convictions of ten men on Illinois’ death row (They Tell Me You Are Cunning). Like all his books, David is inspired by efforts to right criminal injustice.

MICHAEL PENNCAVAGE’s story, “The Cost of Doing Business,” originally appeared in Thuglit, and won the Derringer Award for best mystery. One of his stories, “The Converts” was filmed as a short movie, while another, “The Landlord” was adapted into a play. His debut novel, Person Unknown was also recently released from All Due Respect Press. Fiction of his can be found in over 100 magazines and anthologies from 7 different countries such as Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine (USA), Here and Now (England), Tenebres (France) Crime Factory (Australia), Reaktor (Estonia), Speculative Mystery (South Africa), and Visionarium (Austria). He has been published by IDW and Ahoy Comics.

EMILEE PRADO (@_emilee_prado_) is a fiction writer and essayist. Her work appears in an eclectic range of anthologies and in literary journals including Cincinnati Review, Wigleaf, and CRAFT. She grew up in a working-class family near Denver, Colorado, received her MSc from the University of Edinburgh, and has lived in Asia and South America. She currently resides in Tucson, Arizona. Find out more at emileepradoauthor.com.

A ninth generation Appalachian, ARCHER SULLIVAN resides in Los Angeles where she is a real life Beverly Hillbilly. Her fiction is hard-boiled and country-fried.

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
(In order of appearance of work)

KAREN BOISSONNEAULT-GAUTHIER (@KBG_Tweets) is an Indigenous artist/photographer creating cover images for Synkroniciti, Pine Cone Review, Feeel Magazine, Dyst, Arachne Press, Wild Musette, Gigantic Sequins, The Unmooring, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Gateway Review, Doubleback Review, and many more. Walking her Siberian Husky named Kiowa under an aurora borealis is forever a dream. Visit www.kcbgphoto.com for all her endeavors.

ALLISON RENNER (@AllisonRWrites; she/her) is a writer, editor, and photographer living in Memphis, Tennessee. Her fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from Misery Tourism, the Daily Drunk, Six Sentences, Rejection Letters, Atlas and Alice, and others. She can be found online at allisonrennerwrites.com.

JENNIFER SCIORTINO lives in central New Jersey, offering proof that it does in fact exist. She snapped the photo included in this issue of Rock and a Hard Place Magazine while on vacation in Paris, shortly after getting engaged. If she had a time machine, her first trip would be to the City of Light during the School of Paris heyday evoked in this image.